Me and Mystic Yoga

- Deborah Logan 

Here we are, a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, with much loss behind us, much still to endure, and some vaccine-linked hope on the horizon. A year is a long time to put our lives on hold, to reconcile with seclusion and limitations, to long for the normalcy of casually eating out or going for a walk, of getting on a plane or hugging someone without fear of infection. When I recently read this quote from Christian mystic, Thomas Merton, I found myself interpreting it literally:

“Solitude is not found so much by looking outside the boundaries of your dwelling, as by staying within. Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.”

As one who is in several Covid-at-risk categories, I have stayed close to the “boundaries of my dwelling” for nearly a year. My grown children have moved on, so I am familiar with what Merton calls the solitude of the present, further magnified by the ongoing limbo of Covid. I am fortunate that I can work from home, with plants for solace, cats for company, walks in the nearby woods, and Zoom for everything else. Being house-bound has been less a limitation than a liberating gift: I have really appreciated this unanticipated opportunity to deepen my spiritual practice, without the distractions and busy-ness of my “normal” hectic life. Of course, Merton’s meaning is less literal than metaphorical…

We always, already possess what we need to know; but to access it, we need mindful practice in meditative awareness as well as the inspiration and support of the community to support our individual paths. What more apt sign of our times can there be than the new social infrastructure enabled by Zoom?

Where does Mystic Yoga fit into this profile? In 2018, I spent a semester in Kolkata as a Fulbright scholar doing library research. Walking from home to the library, from library to yoga class and back again shaped my days. I took classes at Mystic’s Purnadas Road centre, revelling in the Café’s special menu and the rescue cats sheltered upstairs. From August forward, this pattern enabled me to witness progress on the neighbourhood pandals under construction for Durga Puja—so creative, so inspiring! During those months, I met many yoga students and learned much from Sudhir, Abhishek, and Chirashree, who welcomed me graciously and helped me work through a challenging time in my life. The most important part of the experience for me was a significant deepening in meditation practice.

Fast-forward to winter 2020, when (back home in the U.S.) I began receiving WhatsApp messages from Mystic Yoga. Class schedules, photos, inspirational images, and sayings—how nice to be included, I thought, but probably just an error in the mailing list. This was the time in our collective history when the magnitude of Covid was just beginning to sink in, initiating the era of social distancing, mask-wearing, deep cleaning and virtual everything. Intrigued by the apparent serendipity of connecting with someone from the other side of the planet at such an alienating time, I answered—and a correspondence resulted. This led to my taking online classes: Abhishek’s Buddhist Studies, Sudhir’s Yoga Sutra classes, Chirashree’s Meditation, plus private sessions. My pandemic routine is now four-five classes a week, a pattern that is the cornerstone of my “solitude” within the “boundaries” of my literal and metaphorical “dwellings.”

Last spring, Abhishek discussed the importance of commitment to one’s practice, to making a commitment and affirming it and reaffirming it again and again, especially when most inclined to give up or abandon the effort. I think of this call to commit when tempted to sleep through the morning alarm instead of signing in to Zoom: because of our time differences, evening in Kolkata is early morning for me. Curious about this novel routine, Bowie-the-cat hovers around the computer, listening intently to Sudhir or watching the cats playing behind Abhishek. What is this, he seems to ask: you talk to a screen and the screen talks back, yet there’s no there there! And what’s up with those other cats?

The emphasis on commitment to ourselves through spiritual practice and to our participation in Mystic’s global community through the magic of Zoom technology is especially suited to this extraordinary time in human history. It will take us years to process the many griefs generated by this pandemic and to realize humans’ collective role in its inception, its mismanagement and, we hope, in its reparation. But the pandemic also represents opportunities, from the small picture—offering each of us a personalized map for spiritual growth—to the big picture—clarifying paths to healing the planet through healing ourselves. What an extraordinary gift it is to Zoom Abhishek from Bodhgaya or Sudhir from Shantiniketan, and how oddly soothing to hear raucous Kolkata traffic sounds during a meditation visualization!

Sudhir reminds us: it is not just you or me but all of us together, each within the boundaries of our individual dwellings, whether in Kolkata or Kentucky. The challenges of this past year powerfully dramatize the concept of interdependence: individual and communal suffering binds us together in an ongoing situation made bearable by compassion, in the Buddhist sense of suffering and its remediation.

The gift of Covid is that we have been forced to be mindful of our every action, so as not to risk infection of self and others, through carelessness or lack of attention: our very lives depend on it. This takes mindfulness off the mat, out of the studio, and into new levels of awareness about what we do, when, why, and how; it extends from our personal well-being to the interdependence binding us all. This involuntary pause in our lives has been made meaningful by the energetic continuity provided by the teachers at Mystic Yoga. Ancient yogic wisdom and cutting-edge technology: what a combination! Who knew?

I have said I am fine with staying home, but I truly look forward to the day I can return to India and take an in-person class with my friends at Mystic Yoga. I look forward to the time when all of us can do as we wish, when we wish,  perhaps more enlightened than in the past by the wisdom wrought of this sojourn in the solitude of our dwellings.

Deborah Logan is Professor of Literature at Western Kentucky University (USA). She has three children and two grandsons and lives in Bowling Green with her two cats, Bowie and IBK.